Dr. Andrea Roberts (The Texas Freedom Colonies Project Founder) and her research team, are excited to announce the launch of a new crowdsourcing project: The Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas along with a survey of settlement locations, preservation activities, and culture.

Since 2014, The Texas Freedom Colonies Project has documented Black settlement heritage and grassroots preservation practice among descendants of these historic communities.

Though there are some 557 known place names, they have yet to be fully verified and their locations formally mapped. The team has located and verified the existence of 357 settlements. In Atlas Beta 1.0, you
shared your stories of 11 new freedom colonies and helped us to put them on the
map!

Atlas 2.0 will make your
participation even easier. Now you can access the map and survey forms in a
single page. We are grateful for your participation and we still need your help
to build this database and map!

The Project invites descendants of settlements (as well as researchers,
advocacy groups, and preservation agencies) to participate in building the map
through the new Atlas mapping tool and survey. Survey participants can add
their freedom colony’s history and stories, memories of visits, images, and
unknown freedom colony names and locations.

The TXFC Project research team invites portal visitors to:

Access the map, search, or add freedom colony location information

Complete the short and extended form surveys so we may include your community's traditions, challenges, and triumphs!

Provide feedback to the project team on the format and content of the map and survey

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch videos about the project
as well as tutorial videos and learn how to use the Atlas!